right, but the stolen phones get sold in other countries where the carriers don't care if the phone was stolen but care that someone is spending money on their service.

I have never seen this happen.

I have however experienced that a ISP will write to you because you have a faulty modem (some Huawei device) and asks you to not use it anymore.

There is a surprising number of carriers in the world that don't care if you're using a stolen phone.

Not surprisingly, stolen phones tend to end up in those locations.

I don't think so. Blowing a fuse is just how the "no downgrades" policy for firmware is implemented. No different for other vendors actually, though the software usually warns you prior to installing an update that can't be manually rolled back.

> It on me, lately my thoughts are defaulted towards corporates sabotaging consumers. I need to work on it.

You absolutely do not, this is an extremely healthy starting position for evaluating a corporations behavior. Any benefit you receive is incidental, if they made more money by worsening your experience they would.

As I understand it, this is a similar thing on Samsung handhelds:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Knox

That's even more dystopian.

Which is why I mentioned that carriers or Google might have that as a requirement for partnering with them. iPhones are rarely stolen these days because there's no resale market for them (to the detriment of third party repairs). It behooves large market players, like Google or carriers, to create the same perception for Android phones.

Thieves don't do that research to specific models. Manufacturers don't like it if their competitors' models are easy to hawk on grey markets because that means their phones get stolen, too.

It actually seems to work pretty well for iPhones.

Thieves these days seem to really be struggling to even use them for parts, since these are also largely Apple DRMed, and are often resorting to threatening the previous owner to remove the activation lock remotely.

Of course theft often isn't preceded by a diligent cost-benefit analysis, but once there's a critical mass of unusable – even for parts – stolen phones, I believe it can make a difference.

Yes thieves do, research on which phones to steal. Just not online more in personal talking with their network of lawbreakers. In short a thief is going to have a fence, and that person is going to know all about what phones can and cannot be resold.